OFFICIAL NEWS

New Patch 1.12 - Advanced Occupations

That's not exactly true, once you've got the 100% recipe and the hang of component gathering, and you gather them in bulk once every few months, the time needed to obtain occupation items becomes quite small.

The downtime they then save me may not be much more when measured in total amount of seconds, but it's time I'd otherwise have to spend waiting around - which makes it subjectively much more time :P

I can't judge what the time investment versus time saved of artificing catalyzers is. Ideally it'd be such that it saves time for the harder to level skills but costs time for the easier to level ones, compared to levelling them without cats....

Even if it is a slight cost though, it still gives you the extra option of alternating between making cats and levelling your skills, rather than spending 100% of your time levelling your skills. More diversity = good.

Unless you are saying the cost is substantial, as in it takes you 10 hours to make enough cats to save you 1 hour of grinding?